A Fellside community group has been forced to go back to the drawing board over its plans to breathe new life into a disused church following a bitterly disappointing funding blow.
Villagers set up a group in February, 2022, with the aim of preserving St John’s Church at Croglin and opening it up as a community asset.
Called Helm Croglin, the idea is for the venue to become a community centre and visitor hub.
Plans include equipping the space with a kitchen, toilet and area to house a post office, library and regular pop-up cafe.
In June, 2023, the group was awarded £250,000 from the then Government’s Community Ownership Fund to cover half the cost of the project.
However, the grant was conditional on securing match funding and it had to be spent within 12 months.
Grant requests for £250,000 were submitted to both the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Rural England Prosperity Fund, but both said no.
A spokesman for the group said: “COF advised us to withdraw and reapply once we had a new plan for raising the other £250,000.
“They hinted strongly that they’d look favourably on a second application. We also spoke to National Lottery Heritage Fund, who suggested we go for a smaller grant from them and make up the difference by applying to other funders.
“We were waiting for the final window for COF grant applications to open when the general election was called. COF was frozen and we’ve been in limbo since.”
The group paused its applications to National Lottery Heritage Fund and other potential funders until the situation with COF was resolved. They have now learned that COF has closed.
Julian Whittle, a trustee of The Helm at Croglin, said: “The announcement that the Community Ownership Fund has closed is bitterly disappointing, especially as there was £6 million sitting in the fund waiting to be awarded to groups like ours.
“It’s a major setback for our plans because we’d been led to believe that our grant application would have had a strong chance of success.
“The trustees will be meeting to consider our next steps.”
